Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: memorization

  • Psalm 119:11 – The Word in My Heart

    Psalm 119:11 – The Word in My Heart

    In my heart have I hidden your Word,
    That I might not sin against you.

    I was introduced to Psalm 119 in elementary school. I had read a fair amount of Bible before that time, but hadn’t read it through. I went to a small Christian school where Bible memorization was a key component.

    We memorized various verses, chapters, and larger sections, such as the Sermon on the Mount, or a lengthy chapter such as Luke 2. And we memorized Psalm 119, all 176 verses of it.

    People have asked me what I thought about that part of my education. Was all that memorization worth it? Didn’t I resent it? I would add that we didn’t just learn the words, and we were not allowed to stumble through our recitation. Our recitation had to be perfect. We had to be able to write the passage perfectly including punctuation.

    I was so steeped in the language of the King James Version that during my first year in college I acquired the nickname “Therefore.”

    Now there are many ways of approaching Bible study. I’m reminded of the story of Dwight L. Moody, approached by a woman who disapproved of his method of evangelism. He asked her how she did it, to which she replied that she didn’t. His response? “I like my method of doing it better than your method of not doing it.”

    I feel the same way about criticism of someone’s way of doing Bible study. If you’re doing it, encourage others, suggest helpful approaches, but don’t be a critic. Would I run a school in the same way? No. But I don’t regret a moment of my Bible memorization there. I’m delighted to be able to find so many passages quickly because I hid them in my heart when I was young. Even though it wasn’t by my choice!

    What’s your way of hiding God’s Word in your heart?

  • Dave Black (and Charles King) on Greek Teaching Methods

    Dave Black notes the following:

    9:04 AM This morning Kyle Davis, one of my teaching assistants, sent me a link to this excellent essay: The Method of Teaching New Testament Greek (.pdf). On the several takeaways I got from reading it, this one is perhaps the most important:

    Extensive memorization produces improved strategies for memorization, but does not increase the ability to memorize. If the learner implements higher order learning patterns, learning becomes easier and more effective.

    Amen and amen! This is one reason I have reduced memorization to an absolute minimum in my own beginning grammar, Learn to Read New Testament Greek, and instead focus on teaching students basic principles of noun and verb morphology. Once you understand how language works, that information will stick with you a lot longer than had you simply memorized a long list of paradigms.

    So grateful for colleagues who teach Greek and who are open to newer methods of pedagogy and linguistic approaches to the language. Why make the subject any more difficult than it already is?

    My own experience is somewhat different than either Dave’s or that of the article author, as I’ve never taught a required Greek course. I did encounter students in required courses in both Greek and Hebrew when I was in graduate school. I had the recommendation of the professor as a tutor, and was frequently sought out in the hours before a test came up, which was normally too late for me to be of much help.

    Since then I have frequently taught either individual students or small groups, but for the most part these were people who really wanted Greek or Hebrew in order to make use of it.

    What does especially resonate with me from the cited article is the note about memorization. I grew up on memorization. We memorized extensive passages of scripture from the KJV in school. For example, I have recited Psalm 119 at one sitting, word perfect. That memorization didn’t make me a better memorizer. What helped me with learning was the simple process of consistently trying to understand what was going on and then fix it in memory through those relationships. Thus learning a system and then memorizing the minimum necessary makes great sense to me. It has made sense to my students as well.

    I am also a firm believer in reading quantities of text in the source language. I was introduced to reader’s grammars by Dr. Sakae Kubo, who edited an early edition for Greek, and I consider them a wonderful tool. Computer based tools replace them for many, but I still need to sit down at a desk from time to time in order to study. I don’t use such tools much now, but I do still have them on my shelves.

    The one item on which I’d disagree is on the value of translating English into Greek or Hebrew. I don’t push it a great deal, but several of my students have testified that it was helpful in fixing vocabulary in their memory.


  • Bible Memorization and Reading

    When I wrote about different approaches in reading the Bible I left an important one out–memorization. I was reminded of this when writing an e-mail to some friends and quoting scripture. I quoted the KJV and wasn’t even aware of it until I’d completely quoted the text.

    So what does quoting the KJV have to do with the value of memorization? It goes back to my school experience. For four years of elementary school I attended a small Christian school that required regular Bible memorization. We didn’t do memory verses–well, we did a few of those two–but the bulk of the program was memorizing chapters or groups of chapters. These included Matthew 5-7 (The Sermon on the Mount), Psalm 78, Genesis 1:1-2:4, and Psalm 119 (all 176 verses). All of this memorization was from the KJV.

    Since that time I’ve learned to read Greek and Hebrew, and I include both in my daily devotional reading. I’ve read the Bible through numerous times in a variety of translations, and I’ve written any number of working translations of verses I’m studying. But I still remember most verses, even ones I never memorized, in the KJV.

    I’m not making an argument in favor of memorizing the KJV specifically. Rather, I’m suggesting that memorizing scripture and doing it early will tend to keep that scripture with you later in life.

    There was one aspect of this training that didn’t stick. They hoped that by making us memorize all this carefully selected scripture, they would guarantee that we’d stick with the doctrinal positions they held. That was one of the major reasons they included texts as well as chapters. We had four texts on the Sabbath, four texts on the state of the dead, and various other Adventist doctrines. It was also hoped that having memorized Genesis 1 we’d be protected against the wiles of evolutionary theory. They didn’t consider that one might love those words, and yet understand them very differently.

    Nonetheless I recommend memorization. In fact, to Greek and Hebrew students I recommend memorizing texts in those languages. I have much better memory for both words and constructions that are in passages I have memorized than I do otherwise. Even better, when I’m discussing the meaning of those words of constructions, I can easily cite the memorized text. I wish I had memorized more back when I was a student, but I still can remedy that.

    So I recommend memorization of selected texts as an aid to your Bible study, whether in English (or your native tongue, whatever that is), or in the original languages.